Chapter 6 #3
“That’s not what I—” He stopped when he glimpsed one corner of her mouth curl ever so slightly. “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”
“All right.”
Morgan took the washcloth and wiped his face and neck with it.
He rolled up his sleeves while Jane soaked it again, and then he ran it along his arms from wrists to elbows.
At her insistence, and because there was no point arguing, he unfastened three buttons on his shirt and union suit and used the warm cloth on his chest.
When he was done, he dropped the washcloth into her overturned hand. “Satisfied?”
“I am, yes. Would you like to lie back or remain sitting?”
Morgan ignored the question. “You can stop trying to impress me.”
Jane’s delicately feathered eyebrows pulled together. “Is that what you think? That I’ve been trying to impress you?”
“Haven’t you? Hotcakes all around for breakfast. Sunday dinner on a day that isn’t Sunday.
Moving the clothes cupboard on your own.
Telling me you’ve got plans to organize the pantry and beat a year’s worth of dirt out of the rugs.
Firing up the dragon without instruction.
Pretty much putting me to bed and attending to me like you’re Clara Barton in a field hospital.
Yeah, I’d say you’ve been trying to impress me with your competence and concern. ”
Jane looked away. She said nothing. Her face was a mask, unreadable.
Morgan sighed. “That probably sounded as if I were ungrateful. I’m not.
I appreciate all of it.” He paused, rethinking this last. “Well, most of it. I guess I’m saying it still feels a little awkward what with you doing so much right out of the gate, like you think I might put you on the next train out of Bitter Springs.
That’s not going to happen, not unless you decide to go. That would be your choice.”
Jane kept her face averted.
“Look at me.” When she didn’t, he said, “Say something then.”
“I am not fearless.”
“What?”
She turned her head to look at him then. “You said I was fearless. I am not. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am trying to convince you I can be a good wife. Certainly I have been trying to convince myself.”
Frowning, Morgan said slowly, “That’s not exactly what I said.”
She did not argue the point. “It’s what I heard.
” Her faint smile faltered. She brushed away a tendril of hair that had fallen across her cheek.
“I want to stay here, but not so much that I would take a role for which I have no talent or regard. I do not mind terribly that you see me as trying to impress with my competence, but it is disturbing that you think it is the same for my concern. I am concerned. You might have been killed.”
Morgan started to object, but he allowed her to cut him off with a shake of her head.
“No, you will never convince me differently, and you should not try to. You know very well there are dangers you face every day. They are part of your life and that makes them part of mine. So, yes, I am concerned that you are properly rested and healed before you lead that animal around the corral again. Because I know you will.”
“You know that, do you?”
“Yes.”
Morgan plowed his fingers through his hair and regarded her thoughtfully. “That sounds like something a good wife would say. She might add a couple or three words about not making her a widow before she’s lost her virginal blush, but everything else about that speech seemed right.”
“I am not opposed to poking you in the ribs or twisting your foot, so you might want to temper your observations.”
It was difficult for Morgan to take the threat too seriously when Jane’s virginal blush was already coloring her cheeks.
He was tempted to kiss her splendid and saucy mouth and was prevented from doing so by the stitch in his side every time he took a breath, but when Jane began to rise, he risked sharpening his pain by reaching for her arm and managing to capture her wrist.
“Yes?” she asked, looking from him to his clasp.
“You’re going?”
She hesitated. “Not if you don’t wish it.”
“I thought you could sit here for a while longer.”
“You’re tired.”
He did not deny it. “Maybe you could read to me for a spell.”
Jane glanced at the books at his bedside. “From one of those?” When he nodded and released her wrist, she picked up the books and held them up. “Treasure Island or Daisy Miller?”
“Do you have a preference?”
“Whichever will put you to sleep more quickly.”
“That’s easy. Daisy Miller.”
Jane set Treasure Island down, walked around the bed to the rocking chair, and sat where the late afternoon sunlight could spill over her shoulder. “I confess to being surprised you are in possession of Daisy.”
“Mrs. Bridger lent it to me on one of my previous trips to town.”
“The marshal’s wife?”
“The schoolteacher,” he said firmly. “She believes everyone should read. She’s going to build a library.”
“Really? Here?”
“Well, in Bitter Springs.”
“That’s what I meant. It is quite a wonderful contribution to the town.” Jane opened the book to where Morgan had inserted a ribbon marker. “You do not seem to have read very far.”
“Second time through.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t much care for Daisy the first go-round. It occurred to me that I should give her another chance before I returned the book.”
“I wish the author had liked her half as well as I did. He might have decided to end her story differently. He wrote her as a woman who did not behave in conventional ways and then punished her for it. It seemed so unfair.”
“I thought she behaved na?vely. I would have liked her better if she acted out of some conviction, but it seemed to me that she was insensible of her society or the stir she created.”
Jane blinked. “You really did read it.”
“You thought I lied?”
“I—no, not—well, perhaps that—” Jane shut her mouth.
“Maybe you should start reading,” Morgan said. “Let Henry James speak for you.”
Jane lifted the book and did as he suggested.
* * *
Morgan slept through supper, which Jane believed was exactly as it should be.
By his own admission, he had gotten very little sleep the previous night.
Jane prepared sandwiches and baked apples for the men, which they carried outside and ate on the back porch.
She considered joining them but decided against it.
Morgan’s view of the flirtatious Daisy Miller might have factored into her reluctance, but Jane was also aware that the men were not as comfortable around her alone as they were when Morgan was in their midst.
It was after seven when she finally stepped outside to take their plates and cups and bid them goodnight.
After she washed dishes, sorted through the ash receiver for cinders and clinkers, and swept the kitchen floor, she checked on Morgan.
He had changed positions since the last time she had looked in on him, but he was still sleeping.
Since she had never managed to get him under the covers, she drew half the coverlet over him and added a quilt from the chest.
Jane checked his brow. She took some comfort from the fact that he was no longer clammy. She removed the basin, cloths, and soap to the washroom, tidied the bedroom, and pushed the steel tub that Morgan had used as a footbath under the bed. She would ask Jake to carry it out tomorrow.
When she returned to the washroom to ready for bed, Jane indulged in a moment of yearning for the copper hipbath to be filled with hot water and sprinkled with lavender salts. It was surprisingly easy to imagine and a good reminder that wishing did not make it so.
Jane removed her dress and examined it for stains.
She had been careful, but she could see where she had knelt in the dirt beside Jem and where the tea she had made for Morgan had splashed her wrist. Remembering what Morgan had said about her fancy clothes, she thought it would have been better to burn her skin than ruin her gown.
She washed up at the basin, brushed her hair, neatly plaited it again, and put on her robe over her nightgown.
She wore kid slippers but acknowledged that a pair of woolen socks would have been a better choice.
She thought about the money she had secreted away under the lining of her trunk and wondered if she dared use some of it for practical necessities.
Her funds were not nearly what she had hoped they would be.
Alex had been mistaken about how much she could depend on.
Jane shivered, not from cold, but from memory.
Alex had been mistaken about many things.
Jane returned to the bedroom and put up her gown in the wardrobe. She closed the door quietly, darted a look toward the bed, and moved to leave the room in what she considered a stealthy fashion.
“Sneaking out?”
Jane stopped short of reaching the door. Perhaps stealthy and silent were not quite synonymous. “I did not want to wake you.”
“Why not? We haven’t finished Daisy Miller.”
“No, and we are not going to.” Lamplight bathed Morgan’s face, but his expression was shuttered and Jane could not tell if he was disappointed or relieved. “I put your supper on a tray in the dining room. Would you like it?”
“I’ll get it on the way back.”
“On the way back? What do you mean?” But she understood precisely what he intended when he struggled into a sitting position and slid his legs over the side of the bed. Jane threw up a hand. “Stop right there. I’ll get the pot for you.”
“The hell you will.” Morgan mostly swallowed a groan as he got to his feet. In deference to his injury, his weight was not distributed evenly. “If you want to be helpful, you’ll lend me your shoulder; otherwise, you’ll get out of my way.”
“You need your boots.”
“I can only wear one.”